


all these immovable objects

by feeisamarshmallow



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief, I'm not kidding this is ridiculously angsty, Michael is having a breakdown, Taking ridiculous shows seriously, tag to season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26195452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeisamarshmallow/pseuds/feeisamarshmallow
Summary: “It’s better this way, without his family. At least he only has himself to worry about. And he thinks he should worry about himself.”Or, Michael’s having a breakdown. Follows along with the events at the beginning of season 4.
Relationships: Michael Bluth & George Michael Bluth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	all these immovable objects

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [kamelea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamelea/pseuds/kamelea) for the beta, especially when she knew nothing of the source material <3\. Any remaining grammatical errors are entirely mine. 
> 
> This is slightly AU, because I couldn't remember why Michael can't go back to the model home after he's kicked out of the dorm, so I've written in this version that his property is being foreclosed on. This isn't consistent with canon, but honestly the s4 timeline is ridiculous to figure out, so I just went with it.

It’s impossibly quiet in Sudden Valley. The silence has a physical presence that Michael feels pressing on his ears. It slithers down his throat and squeezes him from the inside out.

He’s not used to living alone.

He’s used to constant noise. The constant assault of living with his family. Or else the deafening grief of sharing the attic with George Michael. Now he’s alone in the middle of the desert, and in the heat of the day the pavement in his driveway gets so hot that the air shimmers above it like a mirage. There’s no one here for Michael to hold himself together for, and he’s slipping. Rolling away, like the tumbleweeds that drift down the empty street of his cul-de-sac.

He thinks he’s hearing voices.

It’s Tracey whispering something that he can’t understand. Or else it’s his father, disapproving, from the vent above Michael’s bed. In the mornings when he makes his coffee, it’s his son’s nervous humming from behind the refrigerator. He picks up his phone and scrolls through until he finds his son’s name. Hovers his thumb over the call button before dropping the phone like it’s burning him.

His voice grows rusty with disuse until some days Michael wakes up and he can’t speak at all. He’s going crazy, he’s sure of it, but it seems inevitable. He sits on his porch, alone, always alone. Brings his coffee and watches the sun rise in the desert behind the empty cookie cutter houses.

He wishes he could find the painted sky beautiful, but instead the rays sear his skin with the weight of his loneliness. It’s better this way, without his family. At least he only has himself to worry about. And he thinks he should worry about himself. When he looks in the mirror the lines on his face are deeper, his nose and cheeks red from the sun, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t recognize himself anymore.

* * *

The best part of his day is when the mailman comes. The sound of his van’s tires make Michael jump, a rush of anxiety that he takes for excitement. He waits on the porch for the mailman. Waves when he gets out of his van and stuffs a single flyer into Michael’s mailbox.

The mailman always regards Michael with a quiet sort of unease, like Michael’s a wild animal. Like he might bolt at any second. Michael thinks this should offend him, but instead he finds comfort in it. He starts to believe that the mailman—Pete—knows him better than any of his family does.

After Pete leaves, Michael stays sitting on his porch until sweat beads its way down the back of the neck like flies landing on his skin. He shudders, walks back inside, and collapses against the wall of his entryway. The silence pounds on his ears and they start to vibrate in time to his heart beating out of his chest. Vibrating like the phone in his pocket. Gob is calling, but Michael can’t speak and so he lets the phone ring and ring and ring like his ears until he loses time completely. 

* * *

Michael thinks it’s not too bad, going crazy in the desert. He doesn’t have to worry about anything. He doesn’t have any obligations but to the sunrise and Pete the mailman and the voices haunting his too-big too-quiet house.

He dreams about his son’s death on the day Pete dies. Wakes up in a cold sweat after watching his son wither away to nothing just like his wife. That morning is cloudy and the departure from the relentless sun feels ominous. Michael walks out to his lawn, sits down, and looks up at the clouds until they clear, dead grass poking into his thighs and calves.

When Pete comes with the mail it’s sunny again, but Michael should have listened to the warnings whispered by the clouds because Pete drops dead in his driveway. Michael hasn’t felt this alive in months as he cradles Pete’s head, searching for a pulse. The world has snapped into focus. The buzzing and whispering at the edge of his hearing are gone, but so is the mailman’s breath.

Michael’s phone has no service, and he runs desperately with his phone in the air. By the time he’s able to call an ambulance, Pete is dead. They take him away, and all the life drains out of Michael. The sky darkens, greys out like an eclipse. The whispering is back, but now it’s more like shouting. Michael’s pretty sure Pete is haunting him in the form of the vulture flying above his house, circling and circling.

Michael grieves Pete more than he did his own wife. Or maybe he’s just finally grieving Tracey, too. He can’t stop shaking. He’s not sure how many days pass as he lies on the floor, watching the vulture that has landed on his table watching him. 

It’s not silent anymore, it’s way too loud. Michael covers his ears and tries to curl in on himself and disappear until he can’t remember Tracey or Pete or the debt he owes. His phone buzzes and Michael throws it across the room, but it grows louder and louder until he can’t stand it and in a moment of desperation he answers the call just to get it to stop. It’s his son. 

* * *

Hearing George Michael’s voice snaps him out of everything. It’s like flipping a switch. One moment Michael is losing his mind, hovering over the precipice of insanity. The next moment he’s making plans to drive up to UC Irvine, completely and eerily calm. He calls the bank and confirms the foreclosure on his properties, and then applies to University of Phoenix. Shows up at George Michael’s dorm with everything he owns in two suitcases and a sheepish smile on his face.

Michael thinks that things are getting back to normal. But when he lies in his top bunk at night, unable to sleep, Michael imagines confessing everything to George Michael. Letting the words tumble and tumble out his mouth like a waterfall until his son understands about the ghosts and the heat and whispering and just how close Michael was to losing it.

George Michael is blossoming, and Michael is sinking. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, if he clings tight enough to George Michael, he might be able to stop himself from drowning. George Michael’s face has lost the baby fat in his cheeks. When he comes back to the dorm late at night, and Michael can only see his shadow, sometimes Michael doesn’t recognize his own son. 

He can’t figure out how to access his online courses on the computer, and he simultaneously hates himself for asking for George Michael’s help, and is pleased to have a reason to need to stick around. Michael convinces himself that it’s fun, that it’s good, that it’s normal to live with his son in his dorm room. He shares breakfast with George Michael in the cafeteria and stretches his mouth into a smile and gives a desperate laugh and pretends he doesn’t recognize the look in his son’s eyes. It’s embarrassment, concern, and frustration all in one. It’s a familiar one, because Michael’s pretty sure it’s the same face he makes when he talks to any of his family members.

He’s no better than any of them. He’s petty and mean to P-Hound for no reason, and he swears it’s his mother’s voice, soaked in vodka, that comes out of his mouth. Pete died and he’s no better than any of them and maybe it should feel relieving to let go, but Michael can’t really feel anything. He takes a shower and his flip-flops stick to the soapy tile floor in the shower stall until his feet cement into the ground and Michael can’t move at all. It’s then that the tears come, and it’s the first time he’s cried in years. It was too dry, in the desert, to spare the tears. But now he’s drowning, and he’s not even embarrassed when one of the other students timidly asks if he’s okay. 

This time the whispering is real. It’s trendy 20somethings with Macbooks and big dreams and co-eds with tight jeans and drunk fratboys and they’re all wondering why Michael’s here and what’s wrong with him, and he tells himself, with increasing desperation, that it’s fun and it’s good and it’s normal and he may be drowning, but he’ll reach land soon.

* * *

The land he sees in front of him is a mirage, though, because they vote him out of the dorm. George Michael is leaving the family. He’s out. He’s done. He’s not coming back. And something hardens within Michael as he gets a taxi to the airport, like a rock forged from the unforgiving pressure pushing on his chest. 

He won’t budge. He’d like a copy of the in-flight magazine, please. Except he doesn’t say please, and he doesn’t back down, and he’s no longer on the verge of breaking down; he’s just angry. Angry, mean and relentless. But the manager at the ticket counter is equally as relentless. Two objects that won’t break when struck against each other, and instead Michael’s going to Phoenix. He’s going to Phoenix to look out at the orange expanse with its canyons and hoodoos and plateaus, all these immovable objects. 

He burns his hand on the door handle of the taxi at the Phoenix airport and he’s back in Sudden Valley. Except he’s not because he doesn’t have a place to stay. He has nowhere to go. He gets in the taxi and the driver asks him for the address and Michael just grins at him and shrugs. He ends up in a park in downtown Phoenix. Sits underneath a palm tree, the rough bark scratching him through his dress shirt, and lets the sun set on his face. The stars come out, weak and watered down in the city light. He sits there, watching the stars rearrange themselves into pictures, until the horizon buckles, turns grey, and then yellow. 

The next morning, while the world is still quiet, he gets a taxi back to the airport and flies back to California. He’s not sure if he’s feeling better, or just tired of breaking down, but he comes back with the knowledge that he’s no better than the rest of his family and no clue what to do next. He stops at a bike shop on his way home from the airport, convinces them to keep his suitcases in the back, buys a bike with a credit card that he’s surprised still works, and cycles to the cemetery where Tracey is buried. The evening is cool, and he smells the ocean in the air. 

He stands over Tracey’s grave as dusk falls and a breeze blows through the palm trees at the edge of the cemetery. This time when the tears come, it’s only a few, and they slide soundlessly down Michael’s cheeks. He turns on his phone for the first time in 48 hours and expects to feel devastation when he realizes no one has missed him, but he doesn’t. Instead he sends a message to George Michael and tells him he’s okay and he’s back in Newport Beach. He types out ‘I’m sorry’, but then deletes it. He takes a deep breath, feels the salt hit the back of his throat, and gets back on his bike. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you think! This is my first foray into AD fanfic and please don't ask me why I love taking these ridiculous, horrible characters seriously. 
> 
> Michael is pretty horrible in s4, and I was really interested in exploring why. The show gave us such an angsty backstory to work with, what with the company failing and Pete-the-mailman's death pushing him over the edge, that I just couldn't resist. I think Michael's finally not dealing with the constant crises of his family, and it's finally given him space to process of all it, and it's coming out in some pretty terrible behaviour. 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr and talk to me about this show: [@feeisamarshmallow.](https://feeisamarshmallow.tumblr.com/)


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